Stephen Harper Trying To Use Bill C-25 To Legislate Away The Right To Exist For Some Mi’ckmaq First Nations People

With Bill C-25, the Qalipu Mi’ckmaq First Nation Act, Stephen Harper and his Conservative Government of Canada are seeking to stop those Mi’ckmaq denied their right to be recognised as Mi’ckmaq legal remedy in the court system.

What is up Canada? Why do Canadians continue to pretend to care what happens to our First Nation’s People in their fight to be recognised and treated as sovereign independent nations sharing a land mass, lakes, rivers, streams and surrounding waters? How can we stand idle as our government not only follows in the traditions and laws of our European forefathers, but creates new laws to steal even the little rights, dignity, culture and autonomy, that our First Nations were left with after colonization? Canadians for the most part think that the First Nation’s people are an ungrateful bunch of lazy drunks and drug abusers that are sucking the life out of our country’s economy; most Canadians believe this for 2 reasons. The first is because Canada teaches a biased history founded and based on lies. The second is because it makes it much easier for the average Canadian to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the abhorrent conditions many of these people are forced to live in and justify holding fast to what we have stolen from them in the past and what we know we are going to try to steal from them in the future.

Canada ignores its injustices to these people both in the past and present and demands that all First Nations renegotiate new deals with Canada even though Canada has not delivered on one treaty it originally signed with the First Nations without having to be taken to court for first, with these cases going on for years, some for generations. First we stuck our First Nations in remote areas, the harsh lands where no European wanted to live and we kept what we thought was the choice farming land for ourselves. No one was thinking oil and gas back then and travel to the interior was long, hard and dangerous before the railroad was built, the car was invented and flight for humans became a possibility. Once it became obvious to all that the interior of Canada that was now First Nation land by treaty and grant held most of the natural resources (coal, gas, oil, tin etc.), as well as most of this country’s much sought after precious metals and precious and semi precious stones, we as a country and as a people sought to reclaim those lands, or at least control the people and the rights to develop the lands for ourselves. Why can’t Canadians grasp that we are no better than the government that we elect? When we say that the government is not living up to its end of treaty obligations with First Nations,that we are talking about ourselves and should be ashamed of our treatment of First Nation people. Why can’t Canadians grasp that it we that are responsible for the poverty suffering and 3rd world living conditions most First Nation’s people are force to live in (unsanitary drinking water, no modern plumbing etc.? We as Canadians have to understand that when we support and elect governments that ignore, impede and pass laws to further delay and put aside First Nations rights and freedoms, that it is you and me, the average Canadian that are the root cause of First Nation suffering and abuse!

With Bill C-25, the Qalipu Mi’ckmaq First Nation Act, Stephen Harper and his Conservative Government of Canada are seeking to stop those Mi’ckmaq denied their right to be recognised as Mi’ckmaq any legal remedy in the court system. The harper government is trying to backtrack on yet another commitment it has made to a First Nation, claiming they spell a rat, because too many Mi’ckmaq are coming forward to claim their status and be recognised as First Nations people. The truth is that the Harper government did not do its homework as usual and thought that they could get some quick, cheap political points by recognising a band of First Nations thought to be just about extinct and would cost the government very little in terms of land or cost of services afforded First Nations and their people. What did happen was that because this governments mistake in its estimations of how many descendants of the Mi’ckmaq were still alive and how many would come out and wish to file applications of recognition the government decided to change the rules in the middle of the process and make when the applicant for recognition determine what kind of proof was needed to validate that persons request for recognition, creating an easier proof threshold requirement before the date and an almost impossible proof threshold to meet after the date, denying over 100,000 possible Mi’ckmaq the right be recognised as First Nations people. To add insult to injury this government realising that with the way this file was handled they do not have a legal leg to stand on under the Indian Act, the constitution of Canada, or the Canadian Charter of Rights And Freedoms decides to cover their ass with Bill C-25 The Qalipu Mi’ckmaq First Nations Act. There is no other Bill or legislation like this governing any other First nation in Canada and its sole purpose is to deny these 100,000 people their right challenge the government in court if and when they are denied their right to exist and claim, their heritage. The government anticipating the cost of such legal battles feels is moving to legislate the right of these 100,000 individual Canadians citizens right to their day in court away from them denying them due process of law and the oversight of the courts and its justice.

What is up with us as Canadians, Canada, that we can allow for the injustices that we know that our European forefathers committed on the original people of this land to continue and the debt still owing and obligations owed by signed treaties to go unfulfilled and not paid? What kind of people does it make us to stand silently on the sidelines and watch and do nothing to help as government after Canadian government adds more injustices unto the pile of hurt, persecution and oppression that already exists? Our forefathers stole their lands not with a fair fight, but through lies and deception, trickery and fraud. Our forefathers sought to take away their culture, their religion, their language and in most cases they just about succeeded and now we as Canadians seek not to make things as right as possible, but seek to insult these people by playing them for fools as we are doing to the Mi’ckmaq by telling them they are not who they are, because in some cases they sought recognition from us too late, after our imposed deadline for such recognition and the time for being recognised as a First nation Mi’ckmaq is passed. After robbing and tricking these people out of everything they owned, are we now going to compound this by denying them to right to be recognised by who they are? What is up Canada, what gives us this right?

First the Europeans came to this land and found its indigenous people living here in what is now Canada. These First Nations people of Canada welcomed the Europeans with open arms, teaching them how to live off of the land and in fact survive. The First Nations people who were hunter gathers, following their sources of food, trapping hunting and fishing had no idea that the European settlers had not come in peace to trade as they had lied, but as was their practice of doing to every indigenous people they encountered on their travels they had really come to take their ancestral homelands and all that it possessed in terms of natural resources and convert its people to Christianity by any means necessary.

First contact with the European settlers/invaders when they landed on the shores of what is now called the shores of what is now called Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia was enough to kill off a good number of the Mi’ckmaq First Nation’s People; racism and the fear of being discriminated against and abused drove what was remaining of these proud people underground and out of the sight and minds of their racist oppressors and our forefathers. Afraid to be recognized as being of aboriginal decent for fear of persecution that kept them from being able to find work and support themselves they remained underground pretending to be white. Inter marriage between the French and the Mi’ckmaq people put the final touches on the masks these First nations were forced to dawn if they were to survive and in time allowed them to blend in seamlessly with their oppressors, fully assimilated into the European culture. What was left of the Mi’ckmaq people were safe now, because they were being mistakenly taken as being of totally European decent. The Mi’ckmaq may have gained safety from the abuse and racial prejudice of the day afforded other First Nations people by disappearing from sight, but they vanished as a people and with them went their rights to land and the knowledge of their continued existence as a nation of people rather than a few hundred survivors. many Mi’ckmaq are choosing not to come forward and claim their status as Mi’ckmaq. the Mi’ckmaq became so invisible as a people who Joey Smallwood one time premiere of Newfoundland many years later wrongly advised the federal government that, “There are no Indians on the island of Newfoundland.”

Todays Canadians the benefactors of our European forefathers treachery, theft and murder are more concerned how to hold on to what our forefathers have stolen in terms of land and water and the rights to develop and work them, then we are at the prospect of honoring treaties, land claims through honest and fair negotiations. Todays Canadians are the benefactors of our European forefathers and therefore make us the profiteers of what would be considered crimes against humanity today and yet we as a nation and a people seek to justify what our forefathers did to the Mi’ckmaq and all aboriginal peoples, in order to marginalize our guilt and lessen our obligation to negotiate a settlement in good faith that somehow tries to at least put right in some small way all of the hurt and damage our forefathers caused all the First Nations they found inhabiting this land. Canadians go along with their governments on every level when the demand proof of their hereditary right to seek what we know is theirs by treaties signed by our forefathers and never honored, or never signed away by the First Nation, but legislatively stolen from them and so become not only the benefactor of what was a crime against humanity, but become an active supporter and participant in what amounts to ongoing effort to maintain the status quo.

As in this case of this Mi’ckmaq Nation I think that the Canadian government and all honest, fair-minded Canadians know that the Mi’ckmaq were here before our forefathers were and that all of the land and waters and everything found on the land and in the waters belongs rightfully to them and any land claims honored, or treaties they seek honored are nothing to ask for in terms of moving the reconciliation process forward. The Mi’ckmaq know as do we as Canadians that to even question whether or not the displaced Mi’ckmaq, a nomadic hunter gatherer aboriginal people who were displaced and nearly wiped off the face of the earth by our ancestors were actually on the island of Newfoundland before the European settlers came and to prove that they in fact have existing ties to the land to prove that they are Mi’ckmaq is a stalling tactic an insult to these people I contend a continuation of the act of genocide perpetrated on these people by our forefathers. This is a stalling tactic that has been used by governments in Canada to deny all First Nations their autonomy, their land claims and equal nation status that has already be guaranteed to them since the first treaties were signed and the Mi’ckmaq First Nation is being treated no different. They have however suffered a worse fate for having sided with the French against the British. When the French eventually lost the war the Mi’ckmaq behind for the British to persecute and punish. The Mi’ckmaq were thought of by the British as untrustworthy, enemy savages the object of governmental scorn, discrimination and mistrust.

In closing I would say that I am always astounded when I hear government officials talk about the burden that First Nations put on our economy, when in truth it is all theirs and we are the profiteers of subjugation, oppression attempted genocide and treachery. We did not come to this land and fight the people we found here, take the land as our victorious spoils. We came here waving a white flag of peace, with an offer of peace, trade and coexistence as separate, but equal Nations sharing the same lands. We signed treaties and made deals under the flag of peace all the while knowing that we had no intention of honoring any of the treaties and none of the land agreements the fact is we wanted it all for ourselves. no we were no conquerors we were more like the sneak thief, the liar, the heartless con man who dupes whole trusting communities out of what is rightfully theirs leaving in his wake, suffering, pain and anguish.

With every treaty, the Indian Act and all amendments to it and all acts governing our First Nations have been documents used to subjugate and strip the First Nations of their autonomy, their sovereignty as independent nations and all of their rights as a people. There has not been one single effort by any government brought forward to do right by First Nations, but instead have been drafted to ensure that all of our laws remain the priority and that all of their laws need to be okayed by our just to be legal and that their protestations are squashed in legalese and a rig process designed remove, or at the very least delay their right to a day in court, as we are now seeing with the Harper government’s Bill C-25 The Qalipu Mi’ckmaq First Nations Act.

Take heed of the landmark court Supreme Court of Canada case that ruled the Tsilhqot’in First Nation has the title to its land in south central British Colombia. This case has implications for hundreds of unresolved land title claims in the province and for the projects that many First Nations groups oppose, such as the Northern Gateway pipeline. Originally all the First nations wanted was to be consulted and dealt with in good faith, but rather that do this the government forced their hand and now the government of Canada finds itself not only having to consult, but get consent from First Nations. What is up Canada, is the government of Canada ready to negotiate in good faith yet and are we ready to see that they do?